End of Intelligence
by SSRandomness
Summary: 'I couldn't kill him the first time. Maybe it was because I got a good look at him before I had finished assembling the scope on my rifle. Or maybe I was intrigued by the fact that he was… well, blue.' Assasins AU. Storm/Nightcrawler, Ororo's POV. Blood, violence. Kuroro. One-shot. M just to be safe about it.


Hello, hello! It's Valentine's Day as I post this, and it's been sitting around on my Mac for literally over a year. Unacceptable behavior, haha! So I figured, this being a day for love, it was about time I let this little bastard go and just put it up already. So here you go! The lyrics just below are from Mumford and Sons' "Broken Crown", which is one of my faves of theirs.

This ficlet is… well, it's kind of cliché, but I had to do it. This AU is told from Ororo's perspective. Hope you enjoy! Leave me some feedback if you'd like!

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_I will not speak of your sins  
There was a way out for him  
The mirror shows not  
Your values are all shot  
But oh my heart, was flawed I knew my weakness  
So hold my hand consign me not to darkness_

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End of Intelligence

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I couldn't kill him the first time. Maybe it was because I got a good look at him before I had finished assembling the scope on my rifle. Or maybe I was intrigued by the fact that he was… well, blue. But it was mostly because he was standing outside a children's shelter, handing a push-pop to an eight year-old boy. I don't kill children, and I don't kill in their sight. So I left. Decided not to wait it out for hours, see how long it took for him to leave the shelter. And maybe that was my conscience rearing its head for the first time in years (though I'm sure I told myself, and my handlers, that I just didn't want to sit around waiting all day for my target to get clear).

They took me off his six for a brief time. Lucky, because I got the call to take my shot the day after his visit to the shelter. He was sitting on a park bench all alone, feeding the birds— as ridiculous as that may sound. I would've had him, easy. But they called me away. I hate to admit that even then, for some reason, I was relieved.

It was a month after a long mission in the Sierra Leone (one that I was more than happy to accomplish) before they sent me his file again. This time it had a lovely little stamp in the corner: "threat to company". Hmm, not too surprising. He ran plays for a different team, one that my agency had quite the petty rivalry with, and my higher-ups take their authority and singularity in this business very seriously. I had no problem believing they'd kill anyone who so much as took a pack of sticky-notes from their office without asking. But I, like the rest of their gainful employees, knew a whole lot they didn't want me to know, so I wondered for a spell why all of us weren't dead yet or simply "missing from our posts".

They had me track him for a week. Follow him around like a pigeon, from roof to roof, and a stray from alley to alley. Five days I was on him, and on the fifth day he ended up on that park bench again, feeding the birds. And I heard the voice of god in my earbud, so I rolled on my silencer and tucked the gun in my purse before ducking into the little park.

It's always harder when you've actually met your mark, and it's not much different if you've watched them live their life day in, day out, like a really long movie. So I didn't really want to kill him- they had made me watch him sleep, watch him roll through nightmares and come out sweating and miserable before the dawn broke. It was the little things, like that, that were going through my head when I pulled out my gun, and I was so focused on my own crap, I forgot to worry about his.

He looked up at me. Or rather, I thought he was looking at me, because his eyes had no pupils and I couldn't really tell. Well, I'd killed in sight before. Must do it again. Big deal, it's the job.

He tossed the whole bag of birdseed into the air, up high, and it came tumbling down in a shower of seeds. From nowhere, hundreds of pigeons descended on the feast, and he was up and off into the fray. I glimpsed him as he went, smiling at me— my face must've betrayed my surprise. And he just looked at me, right through me. It was like that internet meme: _I see you_. And that was when I really started to see _him_. And then he was gone, and I was putting the safety on my weapon with a win-some-lose-some smile on my face.

I didn't even get an earful for it when I got back to headquarters (they had watched it all on CCTV), and I was re-assigned to a higher priority mission, the protection detail for an ambassador (oh, I'm sure you know all about how that went down…). After a month went by, and no mention of my blue former-target crossed my desk, I began to wonder if they had put another agent on the job and that if that agent, in turn, had snuffed him out. He seemed to be everywhere in the workplace, though not his face: they kept doing training exercises with pigeons for the new recruits. Never failed to make me smile.

He wasn't dead, of course. He had been off radar on a deep cover mission, and they pulled me in to go find him after he resurfaced to use a payphone in Belarus a day prior. So I tracked him down. He was in Montenegro. The very next day, he was sitting at a café, right in sight of my scope. And then he was gone, in a literal puff of smoke— I kid you not— and I had the dubious honor of calling my in-country handler and letting him know that my target had, well, vanished into thin air. And I am relieved to tell you that my handler was nowhere near my location, or I would've broken his nose at the very least when he rather casually informed me that my target could teleport. Oh, of course, "minor detail: wasn't essential to the mission at the time". I could've killed him, and all my superiors, for sending me out so uninformed.

Five days I had followed this guy before, and he never _poofed_ in public! It would explain how he got where he needed to go so quickly when I was following him at night, though. And it worried me that it meant I had spooked him somehow, somewhere along the way, for him to go off like a firework in front of a bunch of tourists. I did not want to be responsible for spooking him, because it might mean my neck on the line.

They pulled me back in. They really did enjoy giving up on this guy, and I wondered how many operatives they had in the field, on and off, checking up on him. Or was it just a one-woman club?

We pulled a pretty heavy op in the Virgin Islands (oh, now I _know_ you saw that on the news), and afterwards disassembled our covert team like a much used weapon. They sent us off to different hidey-holes to stick our heads in the sand. I was in Nassau, wearing a floppy hat and a swimsuit for eight days before I noticed him (and he couldn't have been there more than two days or so: I would've known). He was standing behind a palm tree one minute, and then he wasn't.

I didn't want to be too obvious, so I casually turned over on my side so I could better see the tree through my sunglasses. I looked at the base of that tree on and off for almost a minute, flipping the page of my now inconsequential book, my body tensed for an ambush. A volleyball soared my way, and I looked up as it crashed into the hands of a nearby surf bum, who happily volleyed it back to his teammates. And that was when I saw him; tucked in between the fronds of the very palm tree I had been looking at, up at the top rather than down by the trunk. I tried not to let him see my smile as I hid it behind my book.

He didn't try anything when I left for my hotel room, and I couldn't spot him out of my window once I was inside. I showered quickly, with my favorite miniature harpoon on the shower rack just in case, but he caused me no trouble. I had been planning on settling in for a nice movie night with some room service, but that was before I noticed my tail. My tail with a tail. And I decided to liven things up a bit and go out to the bar on the beach.

I did my hair and my make-up, made it look like I had a hot date or was intending to find one. Oh, I had been bored stiff these past eight days, and I was itching to play a game. So I toyed with him. I flirted with all the well-dressed men, most of whom I had intel on: drug dealers, arms dealers, big tycoons. I danced with more guys with gold chains round their necks than I hope to ever do again, and drank no less than four fruity vodka drinks served in pineapples. I do have an excellent alcohol tolerance.

I let him think I was sloppy, and stupid, and I batted my eyes and laughed really loud… it was one of my best plays yet, I might add. If my bosses had known that I was toying around with the possibility of my death, well they would've given me the biggest earful of my life. But I didn't call it in, just went strolling down the beach, laughing and singing to myself, carrying my heels in one hand and my little black clutch in the other, stumbling in the sand like a drunk.

I think he knew. Oh, I don't think he knew the whole time, but after I'd walked out onto the sand for almost a half a mile, I think he knew. Nonetheless, he was startled when I turned to look at him, smiling a bit cockily, I'm sure.

I don't really remember what I asked him. I think I said something like "Nice to meet you Mr. Wagner. I know your name; you know mine?"

I have come up with better lines in the past, I will just say, but it seemed to do the trick. He smiled back at me, and crossed his arms, and said "tvas a very good show, I vill applaud now."

I took a little bow, but never took my eyes off his. I was feeling extra showy, and extra bold. Maybe it was the electricity from the storm clouds at my back, charging me up like a battery. But I wanted to play; hard and fast and winner take all.

So I asked him, as coolly as I could, "What now? You're here to kill me, am I correct?"

He nodded, and smiled, but didn't move. Clearly, he wanted to play, too. I liked that.

I am very glad I knew about his teleportation abilities this time around, because he was gone so fast I would have been killed had I not known his little secret beforehand. I did a good job on guessing his next locale, though- he popped up behind me. In good form, I spun around and brought a whole sheath of lightning down straight where he was standing. Of course, he 'bamfed' back to his original position before it could touch him. I knew he would. Gave me the satisfaction of looking at him with my own set of pupil-less eyes and letting him know "you're not the only one who's _special_."

He came at me then, and we engaged each other hand-to-hand. It was an easy dance, just for show, and neither of us was really as focused or determined as we should have been. It was all a game. We played our lives every day like chess pieces, moving in and taking out opponents, threats, and occasionally, as in our case; other players. But it was all so black and white, and spies— of course— are rather exciting people, and so the temptation of adding a little color, bringing in the spice of life, can sometimes be a little too much to ignore.

There were no powers for the first minute or so. Then, I think in an effort to scare me, he teleported around me several times in under fifteen seconds, in a neat circle, staring and smiling while my lungs filled with smoke. I must've said something like "neat trick" before he grabbed me in the crook of his arm, and I could jab back into his appendix and throw him to the sand. I let go of him before I moved to drive the heel of my foot into his clavicle, and that was a mistake. He was back behind me in a flash.

After we scuffled for another minute, I discovered that whatever is on him teleports _with_ him, and that included me. He landed a blow to my shoulder and clearly intended to 'port back around behind me and lay me out with a kick to the small of my back or the back of my knees. So I grabbed him before he could go, and the next minute I was facing the opposite direction, my nose was filled with the stench of sulfur, and I almost vomited my fruity beverages all over the sand. I flipped back and allowed the wind to carry me a yard or so away before I landed.

He was laughing. "If you intend to be a frequent flyer," he said, "perhaps you should get some motion sickness pills. I heard they help. They helped my ex-girlfriend, at least."

I smiled as I spun a little cyclone into being and whipped the sand in around him. He shut his eyes and 'ported away, and where he landed next I sent lightning. It was like tag. A really messed up, sick game of tag. He continued popping up here and there, and I continued to strike at him until, by the end, we both were laughing too much to keep going.

When the giggle fit had subsided, he gave a graceful bow and, much the same as I had, kept his eyes on mine the entire time. "It vas a pleasure to meet you," he said, and he winked, I remember. Then he was gone. And I picked up my stuff and headed back to the hotel. "Pleasure's all mine."

And it was. Always nice to meet another business associate while on vacation, even if they work for my company's top competitor. I couldn't keep my mind off him, even after I had reached my room. I lay down on the bed and tried to meditate, but my head was full of the fight. I held my hands to the ice bucket on my bedside table for a while, and then glued them to my stomach, hoping the cold might help reduce my heart rate and fix my dilated pupils. It didn't work; the ice was like an aphrodisiac, and goose bumps crawled up my body from stomach to chin. I had to go take a long, hot shower after that; take care of some things. I slept curled around my pillow like it was another person.

I did not see him again. The rest of my prescribed vacation was dull as a butter knife, and I was almost ecstatic to be called back in to work. Where did I go next, Chechnya? Or maybe the Congo… I can't remember the order. They were both pretty standard protocol procedures. I didn't see him again until I was in Rome, and this time we were pursuing the same target.

This guy was a big drug runner, and a nasty slave trader. The rumor was that he had a whole compound hidden in his hillside villa where he kept no less than six girls under the age of fourteen for his personal playthings. And though we were competing, technically, for the same prize, my blue 'frenemy' and I joined forces, so we could claim the kill for both sides and go home winners all. Also, perhaps, because neither of us really wanted to give up the chance to rid the world of one more monster.

We chased his black vans down more streets than I could count, at top speeds that I didn't know a little Vespa could handle. I was up for the driving challenge, (though I will admit, when we wove through that little café, I was quite worried I had run over a little old lady's diamond-collared dog, but I digress). A few more vans came up behind us after a moment, and while I memorized license plate numbers and shot up the doors of the ones in front of us, Kurt clung to the back of the moped like a little monkey, facing backwards and firing off rounds through our pursuer's windshields.

It was a long day, and a long night, but by the end of the next morning our target and his closest friends were getting packed up in a truck and taken off to an underground fortress some place. We were both of us so tired that we collapsed in a nearby hotel room, as by now we had made it up to Florence, and our contacts had not yet provided us with accommodation.

We woke around dinnertime, a little dazed to find ourselves camped out in a tiny room with the enemy: me, boggarting the bed, and him sprawled out across the ugly yellow couch. I guess we decided not to address it, or just ignore it, but we were up and hungry, so we ate a big dinner at a local café, the best pasta I've ever tasted and by far the best wine. Then we strolled through town, picking up pastries and gelato along the way, topping it all off with decaf espresso and a view from the Ponte Vecchio. It must've been three a.m. by the time we wandered back to our hotel, laughing like old friends. And I think we both knew it was going to be a long night.

I didn't even let him get up the stairs. He was telling me something about his foster mother trying to kill him, but I had him against the wall in no time. It had been so easy, so calm when we were out in the city, but now, back inside, I was consumed by how much I wanted him. He didn't seem to mind. If I recall correctly, he picked me up and wrapped my legs around his waist like a belt and teleported us up the remaining flight of stairs to the room.

When we were done, which could've been one hour later or four, I really can't tell you, I stared at a little crack in the ceiling and refused to look him in the eye. When I did look, he was rubbing his eyes aggressively, and he blinked a lot when he took his hands away. I think he might've been crying. Maybe it had been a long time since he'd gotten any, too.

But I couldn't even laugh about it, and I couldn't let it go. Because I think he knew what I knew: that this hadn't done it, that this wasn't it. We had tried— oh, how we had _tried_— to get it all out in one night; to love as hard and strong as we could so that we could leave it in the morning, sexual tension abated, and go our separate ways. And if we met again on the field of battle, it wouldn't change anything. Oh, but we were so foolish and immature to think so, and we were so wrong. Lying there, watching the ceiling fan go round and round again, I think we both knew that, from this point on, we were quite literally screwed.

We didn't meet again for almost four months. I had been dying for him, I suppose, because when I saw him next, on a small pedestrian street in Paris, I almost skipped over to him like a little schoolgirl. I may have done, actually. And when he turned to look at me, he didn't smile for a second. He looked stern. And I froze. I was terrified. I had not for a moment stopped to think that he was here to kill me, that I would be dead in moments, that I had walked into an enormously obvious trap. I was so distracted by it all that I hardly noticed him approach me, grinning, and quietly lead me away down an alley. Dazed, I made up my mind to kick him in the groin with my stilettos if he turned on me. He didn't.

He 'ported us down to a little nook in the alley. It smelled of fish and soap, but he just looked at me, and kept on looking. I tried to be very professional. I told him that my assignment was approaching completion, and my associates would be extracting the subject of our interrogation before dawn tomorrow, and formally asked if he was operational or simply lying in wait. He was kissing me so fiercely then that I hardly had time to breathe in between bouts.

I caught my wind eventually, and by then we had found a small hotel off the radar, where neither of our handlers would think to look, and had stolen away, listening to the sound of the winter rain on the windows as we loved without talking. We ate baguettes with salty yellow butter and drank tiny cups of coffee, and I can't remember ever being so happy. It made me sick. It must've made him sick. I found myself kissing his nose, and he was laughing like a little child, tickling me with his tail. I'm almost embarrassed for us just thinking about it. It had been a long time since I'd been in love, and it had never come so early, or been so unprecedentedly and disgustingly perfect before.

I don't think we got out of bed for three days straight. Except for bathroom needs, and to procure more baguettes. It was an endless cycle of talk and sex and a little sleep in between, and it suited us just fine. I had never told anyone all the things I told him over the course of those three days. And it was stupid. He could have ruined me with that information, and his agency could've. It was so reckless, and idiotic, but I suppose that's love. He told me all about himself, his past, his very, very complicated family life (I mean, _wow_), and in the end I could've just as easily ripped him apart with it all as he could've done with me. But we didn't. There was an unspoken level of trust that, to be honest, frightened us both. Because it was so unwarranted. We lied, and killed, and snuck around to make our livings: we were paid to be the least trustworthy people on earth. Maybe that's why it worked. At least for a while.

We met less and less often. My agency was less interested in killing operatives from the opposing firm and more interested in a long chain of smugglers selling unprocessed uranium on the black market. I didn't share this with him, the less he knew the better. I knew nothing about the nature of his priorities, and so it was safer for both of us.

It wasn't safe at all, what we were doing, but these were the little lies we told ourselves when we slipped up. Like when we bought burner phones, a packet of five each, to tide us over until our next meeting, whenever that would be. We wrote the numbers on lists encoded in our agency phones where no one could find them. When we managed to speak to one another, we would destroy the phones afterwards, and when either of us felt we had gone too long without speaking, we would simply call down the line until one of the numbers worked.

He wanted to make plans. We were in Vancouver after serving on two separate protection details for a United Nations summit. Perhaps it was being in close proximity to each other, having to walk past one another in our best suits down blue-carpeted hallways, flanked by our co-workers and superiors. We lived for adrenaline, and the thrill of such an explosive game of cat and mouse and don't-spill-the-beans was tantamount to no game we had ever played. I think we made it maybe four days without speaking, but he found me while I was inspecting the kitchen for my team, as was he, and we ended up breaking three shelves in a broom closet down the hall. I would like to take this time to formally apologize to the Four Seasons of Vancouver for our inconsiderate vandalism. Seven minutes in heaven, as they say.

I was sitting by the carefully covered window of the cabin we were renting with cash a week later, and, like I said, he kept talking about making plans. It was the first fight we ever had. And I can't remember what he said or how it all started. Something about family and "if you're ever in Germany", followed by a rehashing of my earlier idea of setting up an untraceable video chat site so that we could get face time while away. I remember throwing my coffee mug against the wall. I think I was more angry at the world than I was at him, but I was screaming that he was delusional, that he was going to get us both killed, that I should have shot him a long time ago and been done with him. And he just stood there and took it all, holding his coffee mug at the ready like he was waiting for me to stop so he could have a sip.

I must've gone on for about thirty minutes straight, nonstop, saying the worst things. And he never said a word. By the end, I was such a mess that I couldn't stand up. I just crumpled into a heap on the carpet and shook. He was shaking too. He knelt down and picked up the pieces of my broken mug, and kissed my forehead. In my mind, I could count no less than eleven different ways that I could kill him right then and there. It'd be easy. No one at the company would mind if I took out an enemy agent while off assignment. Hell, I might even have been given a goddamn medal for extraordinary initiative. I could say he attacked me. What the fuck, right? He wouldn't be there to tell his side of the story to his puppeteers, so I'd win out easy. Easy peasy.

But I couldn't do it. He knew what I was thinking, too. He picked up the biggest piece of the broken mug and put it in my hand. "If it vould make you happy," he said. If it would make me happy. Damn him. I dropped it. I couldn't even raise it to his neck. I just wrapped my arms around him and started to cry. I couldn't even see, I was so mad. And he held me, and crooned in my ear, and I know he was crying too. I'm not a crier. I simply don't do it: it's a sign of weakness. And Goddess, was I weak then. That was the hardest I'd ever cried in my life. Until I lost him, of course.

It was a regular Tuesday, and I was in Moscow, part of a team of three. Following a lead on the uranium again. It didn't amount to anything— the lead was old. We found the location our agency had been given, and the Geiger counter measured high levels of radioactivity, but not as high as they should have been. The factory was empty, and the uranium had been moved. We got in the car and drove off to the hotel in silence to await new instructions.

Once I was back in my room, I called Kurt. We had one burner phone left each, and I had seen him only two weeks prior, so it seemed like a waste to call him, but I wanted to anyway. Maybe I had a feeling. My calls didn't go through, and I called three times. I was a little worried, but we had lost or broken burner phones before. It happened; I tried not to feel paranoid.

It was maybe two a.m. in Moscow when I heard whispering outside my door. My sleep had been troubled: I dreamt of Kurt falling and falling and falling, and I was flying down after him but I couldn't reach his hand. So I lay awake after that, and it was easy to notice the whispers. They were Kitty and Piotr's voices, my teammates. I got up and opened the door a crack, ready to say something to them about the children letting the adults get their beauty sleep. But their faces were drawn and their eyes were red. Kitty looked like she'd been crying, and they sat very close together outside my door, as though on guard. I heard something along the lines of "what do we do?" and "when the team gets here…"

I don't want to involve them in this, but they begged me to: made me promise I'd tell the whole truth of it. I wish I didn't have to, but they were engaging news teams in Russia when I left, putting their lives on the line. I will never be able to repay them for their kindness.

But before all that, back in the hotel, I opened the door to the hallway and asked them what they were up to, sitting outside my room.

"They want us to terminate you," Kitty told me.

Piotr snapped "Kitty!", but she just marched into the room.

"We're not going to kill you," she said, "I mean, I don't actually think we could."

But Piotr said there was a hit on my head, and that I would have to go. And that they would toss the place afterwards and make it look like they fought me off. For that, they're two of the bravest souls I've ever met. I listened calmly and, finally, when they stopped their tirade of directions and apologies, I asked them why the hell there was a hit out on me, and within my own agency to boot.

Piotr said the order wouldn't go out until a backup team could either confirm or deny the kill that he and Kitty were supposed to make. A backup team that was on its way. Kitty just stood there, getting paler by the minute. In the corner of the room, my tablet dinged. It was an email from the agency server with two video files. I opened the first one and pressed play.

It was black-and-white camera footage, not the best quality images either, and it appeared to be mounted on a car dashboard looking through the windshield. It had a good zoom though, and as the car moved forward, a gap in the dense trees surrounding the vehicle allowed for a better view of a little brown cabin up the hill. I knew that cabin. I don't think I've ever been more afraid in my life than when I saw it.

And there we were, Kurt and I, on that video. Hidden, for the most part by the gauzy curtains, but the camera got all it needed and cut away to paste little pictures of our faces on the screen and identify us by our names and codenames, ranks and numbers. They had an extra image of me with my head on his shoulder. How cute. I almost broke the stupid tablet.

My career was over, and they wanted to kill me. All right, time to find Kurt and run. I looked at my team, and Kitty was properly crying now. I went to put the tablet down and noticed the second tab. I opened it.

Kitty started screaming for me not to, but I walked away from them, Piotr dragging her out of the room, and I pressed play.

It was like one of those terror videos, or kidnapping tapes, where they list their demands at the top and then show you a video of what they can do. My agency's demands were that I be terminated on grounds of extreme insubordination and inappropriate conduct. And their video was of Kurt. He wasn't being tortured, and they were not making him read some manifesto of power. He was dead, beaten bloody; swinging from the ceiling fan in my living room by a rope wrapped around his neck.

I dropped the tablet and it cracked. But the video was still going, and no matter how I screamed for it to stop, it just kept playing and the tablet refused to break. Kurt was covered in blood, some old and some fresh, and there was a black sack over his head so that I couldn't see his face. They had split his tail in half from the tip to the middle, his arms were covered in powder burns, and the dark stain of blood and a loose shape at the crotch of his pants told me that his tail had not been the only appendage to be severed.

I couldn't stop watching them poke and prod at his body until the video ended and the screen went black. I'm not sure what sounds escaped my mouth, or what I said, or how loud the wind outside became. Only that I was past madness, and that I hit the drywall so many times it was full of holes and spattered with my blood. And I curled up on the concrete and tried to think, please, Goddess, let me process _something_; but all I could see was Kurt's body suspended like a bloody ragdoll in the center of my house. It was an olly-olly-oxen-free play. To get me to come home and thereby make it easier for them to kill me. And I was in just the right mood to do exactly as they asked.

I found Kitty and Piotr in the adjacent room. Kitty was whimpering and I screamed at her to stop her fucking crying or I would. Piotr told me that one Raven Darkholme, aka Mystique, had shot the video (Goddess, how I hate Kurt's family) in an effort to end her son's espionage career, since she worked for a very powerful crime lord and Kurt's interference was bad for business. Apparently, she had not considered that his agency would not only abandon him, but that mine would take him out, so she went rogue and had for the last three hours been disassembling the ranks of Kurt's agency for sending him off to his death. That was fine with me, let her play her games with them and see how far she got. Then I wouldn't have to kill her myself.

I took the car and drove out to the airport. I was going to take this to the very top, get the one who ordered the hit, and get out, or get as far as I could. And while I was at it, I was going to maim and kill the men poking Kurt's body with cattle prods in that video, who had been ignorant enough not to wear masks.

At the thought of it, of Kurt being beaten and abused, having to fight off attackers from all sides while on the run from his own agency; the thought of him running blind, knowing better than to call me, no matter his pain; the thought of him dying at the hands of sadists and masochists, being hoisted up to a makeshift gallows in my own home, I became overwhelmed. The pain was so abrupt, I had to stop the car and vomit onto the floor of the passenger side. Like I said, I've never cried so hard in my life. I couldn't move for what seemed like ages. Of the four times I have ever wept in my life, that was the worst. But I had to keep driving through the rain and sleet and the storm I was causing. I had to get to the airport, get on a plane, and get the bastards that took him from me.

So, if you're watching this stream, then you've seen the footage. You've seen what an intelligence agency is really capable of. There is no accountability, and no transparency, and the buck stops with me. Do I think it'll make a difference? Do I think it'll all be rosy now? No, I don't. But you deserve to know what's going on behind your backs, whether you feel it's a crime or not. It's your right.

Now, I'm assuming this will cause a bit of a frenzy online, and the internet will eat it up for a while, and maybe, if I'm lucky, a mutant civil rights group will get involved. And if I'm _very_ lucky, the government will call for an investigation into the inner workings of its agencies. But it will all go away eventually, and they'll resume the same tired charade of lies and brutality that we, as agents, try so hard to ignore.

Oh, I did this backwards, didn't I? I'm sorry. My name is Ororo Munroe, and if you're watching this, then chances are I'm dead. Probably at the bottom of a lake someplace, and that's fine. I'm not important. And neither was Kurt Wagner, really. In the end, we were just pawns. What matters is you. You are more than just people, you are a nation: and it is your job now to do what you see fit, and if that happens to be ignoring everything you've just heard and seen, then so be it. That's fine. My part is done.

I'm going to the compound now. It's only a mile away, but this rooftop has such a wonderful antenna, I couldn't resist hooking up my laptop and streaming to you live. I hope you paid attention. I'll keep it on a loop, but I recommend that those in the media and within our government save a few copies of this when I'm done and it's all recorded. Because it won't take them long to find this setup up here and destroy it. Shame. It really is a nice antenna.

This is where I leave you. And I want to thank you for watching, wherever you are. For witnessing what I had to show you, and for listening to what I had to say. I hope I made a decent storyteller in the end. And my last hope, before I leave, is that you tell the story now. Your story. Don't let them take it, or change it. Don't let them hide from their sins. It's going to be hard, but you can do it. Remind them that they work for you. Remind them that they belong to you. Remind them that your life is yours to live, and no one should be able take that from you.

Good luck.

[Stream stopped]

[Looping in 3, 2,…]

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Thank you so much for reading! I hope you liked it. Please feel free to ask me any questions/write me feedback, whatever you'd like.


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